A chill ran up her spine. “Ha-have what?”
“The touch. Yes, I can feel it.”
Grace tried to pull away. “I’m not sure what you mean.” She broke eye contact.
“Yes, you do. The touch of someone who feels what’s wrong and wants to fix it. The special gift that makes a healer.”
Grace gasped and let go, panicked at the woman’s potential reaction. Could she tell?
“Not ever’one has it,” Matty said, turning to bob her chin at the pepper-headed man at Greg’s side.
Grace relaxed.
“That one, for instance, Mathews. He has the technique, but not the call.” Matty looked at her again. “Not the gift.” She sniffed. “So, come, I’ll introduce you.”
Chapter Ten
Grace noticed the change in the atmosphere when she went out in East Bay now to do her errands. People who recognized her from the clinic or church greeted her with cautious friendliness. She enjoyed these small signs of acceptance. She had come a long way since spring when she was the usurper of the Marshall property, the stranger who bought her clothes and furniture as cast-offs from the community. Home at last. This could work. Everything could work out very well, and no one would ever have reason to accuse her of anything.
Tanya greeted her when she stopped in at the bustling café for an aromatic morning coffee and roll, and to buy her mint and pekoe tea blends and some other things the grocery stores in town didn’t usually carry. Carob was a favorite, although she didn’t ever let on to Eddy that he was not eating real chocolate chips in his cookies.
Kaye, though, was another story. The two of them clashed whenever Grace went in to order tea or buy some other goods. She even stopped trying to sit down for a cup of coffee and to read the paper, the vibes were so antagonistic. Too bad, because Grace wanted to like Kaye. The underlying problem revolved around those bothersome brothers. Snide little comments about having the attention of not one or two, but three Marshalls got on her nerves. The woman’s obvious hots for Ted, and Randy’s long-suffering looks at her, drove Grace crazy. As if she was some kind of competition. Which, of course, she was not. Even if, upon occasion, Ted made her remember just exactly what she missed about being married. Anyone who thought widows were out to catch another husband did not understand the concept of the loss. It’s not like they were easily replaceable, mix and match. But why didn’t Randy tell Kaye how he felt about her? Had the woman once rejected Randy? Ted never mentioned her, except as a community business leader and aunt to Tanya. Grace doubted Ted even noticed the unrequited lust going on in front of his nose.
None of your business, woman. Just live—breathe, eat, sleep, work, worship. Not necessarily in that order. East Bay was no different than any place on earth with its little intrigues, busybodies, love and life messes. There was room for her and she was gradually adjusting.
Greg caught her up as she left the clinic after an unusual early evening shift she’d agreed to. Today was a birthday she had no intention of sharing with anything other than a pint of cherry macadamia nut chocolate ice cream and the latest cheesy Nicholas Sparks film.
“Hey! Wait a minute!” He came running into the parking lot before she opened her car door. “Could you possibly do me a favor and take this over to the hospital? Our Internet server just went down and the admitting doc there wants to check out this file. Would it be too much trouble?”
“Of course not. I’ll drive up there now.”
Greg waved as she drove off. She saw him in the rearview mirror as she turned the corner. He cast as long a shadow as Ted Marshall. A shivery echo of the feel of Ted’s touch along her cheek made her jerk the gear when she shifted into fourth.
Eat, sleep, work. You don’t need anything else, Grace. Eat, sleep, work.
She wandered the halls of Bay Bridge Hospital not thoroughly lost, but candidly enjoying the “long way around,” as she told the couple of nurses who asked if she needed help. A faint tang of antiseptic made her feel at home and she could not stop smiling. In Tennessee, Lena had told her she was nuts, but Grace’s sense of smell was acute and she learned the brands of disinfectants almost like the vintages of fine wines.
Someone fell into step with her as she walked along. She looked up and then stopped in her tracks.
Her companion stopped, too, inquiring grin on his face. “Ah, yes! Grace Runyon, new PA over with Greg?” He held out his hand, knocking away the stethoscope that looked cozy around his neck.
“Yes. I’m afraid you have me at a disadvantage.” She sneaked a look at his ID badge as she shook his hand, but it was inconveniently covered by the stethoscope cords.
“Sorry.”
She could tell he wasn’t sorry at all and delighted in taking her off guard. He was probably the latest Lothario at the hospital, young and fresh, good-looking enough to know it and confident, well-dressed, and purposeful. Brown hair, clear eyes, she noticed as he introduced himself. “Tom Rawlins, DO, if you can believe it. We met a few weeks ago at one of the long, dull staff meetings.”
“I apologize for not recognizing you, Doctor. I’m still getting used to things and people.” She continued walking. “Don’t let me hold you up.”
“I think you might have exactly what I need.”
At her raised brow, Rawlins smirked, indicating the file in her arms.
Grace felt the flame on her cheek. “Oh! Right. I’m so sorry.” She looked at the name she had written on the little drug company notepaper, clipped to the file. “Doctor Rawlins. That would be you, I presume?”
“Yup,” he replied, cheerfully. “Call me Tom. Why don’t you follow me to my office? It’s just down the hall, here.”
He held open the door for her, clicking the lights on and taking the file. He flipped it open, indicating absent-mindedly she should sit in the chair opposite his at his desk. Grace did so slowly, while looking around. A couple of nicely-framed prints of birds on the wall besides his various diplomas, two very much alive and healthy philodendrons in brass pots flowing along his book shelves, a mess of papers on a small work table under the now dark window made a comfortable tableau.
The doctor continued to read through the short file, then looked up at her. His eyes crinkled as he leaned back in his chair. “So, how do you like Michigan?”
This time of evening was not a great time to have a conversation, especially when she was tired. “Ah, just fine, Doctor.” She tried to erase the worry lines between her brows and took a calming breath. “Was there anything else?” She gathered her little clutch purse and rose, hoping to escape before she forgot to stay aloof and polite.
That brought Rawlins to his feet in a hurry. “I’m so sorry to keep you. But I wondered if you didn’t have any other plans, if you’d care to have dinner with me tonight.” He came around his desk and made a show of settling her coat over her shoulders.
What on earth? He couldn’t be…could he? “Well, um, I’m flattered.” She stared at his chin for a minute and raised her eyes to his. The hopeful expression said that, yes, he certainly was making a pass. Too bad he wasn’t remotely attractive to her. He didn’t raise a single goose bump or tingle. Certainly nothing like—“I buried my husband a few months ago, Doctor, you see, and ah, I’m simply not ready for…” She let the words fade, hoping it was enough. No need to crush a guy for trying.
“I understand. Can I call you sometime?”
No. “Perhaps in a couple of years.” Grace walked out to the parking lot, head high, and chuckled as she got into her car, wondering if Greg had set her up. It had been a long time—twenty years, in fact, since she had been asked out on a date by anyone other than Jonathan. She doubted Rawlins was really interested, but still…
“Okay, not bad for thirty-six! Happy birthday to me.” She giggled as she drove away.
Grace’s first Thanksgiving in Michigan was over, celebrated low-key with a dinner and church service. Snow had fallen several times, covering her driveway and showing her the real reason for a garage. Snow. So
much already. Would she become used to it?
Eddy’s first school program had been held the evening before the Thursday of Thanksgiving in the school gym. She had been tickled when Eddy invited her to help him learn his two lines, and sat with Ted at the program, returning the nods and little smiles from those she recognized. They wondered, those who didn’t attend church with them anyway, what her strange relationship with Ted and Eddy Marshall was all about. Sometimes she wondered, too, but chose—always careful to tell herself—to let life happen. And it was a good life, working, breathing, giving something back, something that helped, not hurt, others. Earning her way back to forgiveness, so to speak.
Though she hadn’t sent any cards out, she’d received one from home earlier in the week. She put it on her kitchen windowsill after reading the message and turning it over and over. It took a couple of days before she could look at it without feeling nauseous. The last time she had gone into the bank, Mr. Harris, her account manager, had a folder waiting for her. It contained a letter from the lawyer in Woodside and the card.
Elizabeth Runyon’s handwriting flowed as beautifully as always. She had signed on behalf of Roger. Had her former father-in-law known?
Nice of you, Elizabeth. Yes. Very nice. And Elizabeth had been nice. When Grace’s parents died, Elizabeth stepped in. Not to take their place, but to do the things a mother had to do, to be what they needed, especially with Sean and then when Jonathan was diagnosed with cancer.
Would she ever be able to face them again? Had it been enough time since his death, his funeral? Was there some other way she tell them she was sorry, and that she was trying to make it up to them by helping others? Grace considered writing back, a little frightened that maybe they’d ignore her. Or worse, that someone would come and find her, take revenge, as she deserved. Maybe she’d write a Christmas card. Maybe even a card and letter to Lena, her closest friend. Time might be the universal healer, but not near enough of it had passed for her to feel completely at ease with her past. Maybe it never would.
A welcome knock on the door put an end to her dilemma as Randy and Eddy came stomping in to claim their hot chocolate after shoveling snow from her sidewalk.
“Ted wasn’t kidding back in August when he told me about the snow in Michigan.” She pinched Eddy’s tasseled hat and pulled it off, smiling at his rosy cheeks and runny nose.
Randy unbuttoned his coat, but left it on. “Who’s afraid of a little snow?”
“Didn’t you have snow in—achoo!—in…” Eddy managed to rub his nose on his sleeve before she could reach him, “in Ten—” The rest was muffled under Grace’s tissue and command to “blow.”
Randy’s assessing eyes made her tense. They might have reached a point of common familiarity, certainly respect, but not the level that called for this type of inspection. There were plenty of things he didn’t need to know about her and her past, for instance, that would certainly unlevel the playing field.
If he could check her out, she could return the favor. He had let his hair grow a little longer for the winter so that instead of looking like a bristle brush over his scalp it covered his head in a smooth wave, softening his expression. In fact, everything about him was softer than their first meeting on her front porch last spring. Whatever the reason, he no longer terrorized her, even if she wasn’t as comfortable with him as with his brother. She answered Eddy.
“Not like here, Eds. It snows a little, but doesn’t usually stay around much. Sometimes we get great ice storms.” She tried to measure up to their excitement.
The little boy helped himself to the cocoa mix on her kitchen table, leaving a dusting of the brown powder. “Hey, Grace, where’d you get the turkey card?”
She snatched Elizabeth’s card and stuffed it in a drawer. “Just someone I knew in Tennessee,” she said quietly. “Don’t I need a snowman for my yard? Let’s make one after hot chocolate!”
“Hey, Grace, grab your coat and come on. You’re gonna love this—it’s right up your alley! Oh, and bring some of your goo—the hot stuff with the Capcaisin.” Greg Evans was on the run, pulling her along with him. “Hold down the fort, Nancy, and reschedule until three o’clock, okay?” He didn’t stop for her affirmation before hauling his carry bag out the door and to his car.
“We don’t do a lot of house calling, but once in a while,” Greg started to say, before concentrating on getting out of the parking lot past the unsmiling elderly couple driving in, and down to the old country road leading out of town, driving over the hard-packed snow as if it wasn’t there. Grace still couldn’t make herself go over thirty-five.
“Anyway, once in a while I’ll go up and see a few people who can’t come in to the clinic.”
“What do you mean, ‘right up my alley’?”
“A lot of your Tennessee folk came up here in the nineteen forties and fifties to work in the auto industry, which is, for all practical intents and purposes, no longer the promise and hope for the future that it once was. Of course these people, second and third generations of them now, stayed and continue to live like they always did—no offense.”
“None taken, I’m sure,” she replied a little huffily. What—did everyone really think all hill folk were backwoods country idiots?
She caught Greg’s glance and twisted her lips in a terse smile.
“It’s not a crime to be poor,” Greg commented.
“It’s not a crime to be a hillbilly, either. Not everyone from my home is backwards or indigent.”
Greg touched her hands. “No one said they were. I thought you might like to meet some of these folk. You know, you told me that you did this kind of thing back around Woodside.”
She relaxed. “You’re right. I miss that, going up to see some of my patients. I used to keep an emergency pack in my car and everything. People knew my number, and I’d go when I had to. Sometimes Jonathan would become annoyed when I went alone out at night.” She turned to look out of the car window, watching carefully which turns Greg made. “So, what’s the case today?”
“It’s Elvira Brown. Everyone calls her Granny B. Severe arthritis. I’m trying to get her to do some simple exercises, but, well, you know what they say…”
Grace snorted. She followed him out of the car and treaded carefully through wood soot-dusted piles of snow to a faded house with a stream of smoke climbing from a chimney.
“She always has a plate of rock-hard cookies or shortbread or some of her preserves set out.” His voice whispered conspiratorially as they knocked on her dilapidated door, “Stay away from the lemonade-looking stuff. It’s made from sumac.”
She raised her brows. “Lemonade in winter?”
Greg only laughed.
Chapter Eleven
The trouble with Thanksgiving is that Christmas comes right afterward.
Grace searched through the gaudy boxes of Christmas cards in East Bay’s variety store. The flash of a familiar bulge caught her eye.
“Caught ya!” she hissed, from just out of sight in the next aisle. She giggled as her pregnant friend jumped and turned pink as an eight-year-old caught holding the lid to the cookie jar. She peeked around the corner.
“Honestly!” Shelby pulled her coat tighter around her middle and looked back and forth. “I thought Davy had the bed rest cops out again. Here I was, hoping not to run into anyone I knew. After the last time, I can hardly go to the bathroom by myself when he’s home. I’m going crazy all cooped up.”
“Did you sneak out? At least the weather’s nice. I hope you only toddled these three blocks from your house.”
“Of course! How about you come have a tea with me?”
“You betcha!” Grace giggled. Midwestern slang showed up in her vocabulary when she least expected.
Back at the Brouwers’, she helped Shelby with her boots and coat and bundled her up under the afghan on the sofa.
“I don’t know if I’ll ever be able to wait on anyone else again. I’m getting used to this royalty treatment,” her friend
said.
“I don’t think you need to worry about that when the baby is here.”
“You bought some Christmas cards.”
Grace nodded, wary.
“Eddy told me that someone sent you a Thanksgiving card from Tennessee.”
“Hmm.” Little pitchers…no secrets with the boy around. She might as well have taken out an ad in the paper. She bent over her steaming mug, praying her friend would drop it, yet hoping she could talk to someone about the overwhelming nostalgia. Last year she’s spent the holiday with Jonathan and his parents in the hospital. They hadn’t been able to stay long. She could do without that particular memory, but there’d been others. Her first married Christmas. Sean’s first tree and gifts. He’s stared at the lights in fascination, cooing and gurgling.
Shelby drank from her own cup of Mystic Orange. “This is your first holiday on your own, I think, isn’t it?” She held out a tissue.
Grace grabbed it like a lifeline. “Y-y-yes, it is. I didn’t imagine it would b-be so h-hard.”
A soothing touch felt like a blessing on her bent head. “It’s okay, Grace. Someday you’ll feel like things are working out, life is more than simply sleeping, working, and breathing. You’ll see. It’s about time you let go of some of that anxiety for the holidays you’ve been carting around.”
“You’ve been a great friend. You’ve made me feel welcome, helped me so much. I’m not sure I would have stayed if you hadn’t been so nice.” Grace sniffed and wiped her eyes.
“Yeah.” Shelby rubbed her bulging tummy. “Well, I doubt that I’m the reason you stayed. But thanks. Sometimes, when you’ve known people all your life, you don’t really have anyone to tell things to ’cause they already know it!”
It didn’t hurt when Grace cracked a tentative smile.
“So, you’ve been exactly the friend I’ve needed, too,” Shelby said. “Ooh!”
“What is it? Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” she wheezed. “Just an extra tug. I think.”
Healing Grace Page 9
